


never let me go

by kalimero



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Endgame, F/F, Fix-It, Platonic Anne/Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5985391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalimero/pseuds/kalimero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne awaits her execution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never let me go

**Author's Note:**

> This has a happy ending. I swear. (ETA: Also, now that S4 has aired, it's not 100% canon compliant anymore in some of the details but I think the overall sentiment still works.)

**i.**

This is the end. The jury of matrons has come and gone. Now there are few days left, the sand in the hour glass halted until the moment of reckoning. Anne feels suspended in time and her only hope is that death will be a release. That the sand will come rushing down when her body swings from the gallows. That all will be forgotten. A miserable end to a miserable life. Except… it was not all… not with Jack and not with…

It hurts to think of her. Anne stares at the walls and wonders how men could have fashioned such a thing, something that can keep her locked up. If only they were as accomplished in every respect. As it is, they can imprison, torture and kill, a short and sad list. Once upon a time she would have granted them a prowess at fucking but now she questions even that. Yes, they can hump like animals. Some, like Jack, can be tender. But bliss, harmony, letting go of your senses until you are one with the world, that is beyond them to give. They take. They may try. They can care, some of them, but none of them can love with the abandon of a woman who knows that she will always be at the mercy of someone else, if that someone is a man. Anne never understood how Max could do it. How she could let her guard down like that because she thought there was nothing inside her worth guarding. Anne had always been guarded. Even with – not really with – Jack; she struggles to place him and realizes that he is the exception to everything.

Soon he will be nothing.

_“Right, now that you have sentenced us to death, I would like to point out, if I may, most honorable Judge and Governor, that my esteemed colleague here by the name of Anne Bonny is with child.”_

_“Pleadin’ her belly, is she?”_

_Governor Lawes looks her over, narrowing his eyes sceptically. She looks at Jack, stares, bewildered, wants to mouth something to him, ends up shouting._

_“What the fuck, Jack!”_

_“Darling, no need to take our child to an early grave, don’t you agree? Live a little longer, for me, please, it would really cheer me up when they put the noose around my neck.”_

Tomorrow. That’s when he will hang. His screams may reach her cell although she thinks there won’t be much screaming. Only from the crowd. And laughs. And applause.

Anne digs her nails into the skin of her palms. Really, what the fuck was he thinking. She isn’t pregnant. He knew that. They had never slept together ever since finding the Urca gold. Their bond had been about something else, always, in a way. Did he think they wouldn’t find out? Well, the matrons furrowed their brows when they examined her and who the fuck knows what that means. They have left. Nothing to be done about it now, not anymore. Anne thought about grabbing one of those spiky instruments and shoving it into someone’s eye for the sake of it, one last rebellion against the injustice of being and being forced to be like this, but then she had a vision of Max and the thought fell from her mind like polluted rain dropping into the ocean.

Max. She bites her lip. Caresses the rough stone next to her face and imagines something else beneath her fingertips. Tears well up inside her. Furiously, she scrubs her face. Fuck this shit. She doesn’t need this. She should be dead already. At least she wouldn’t have to feel anything.

The straw reeks of piss. The sun is going down.

Anne crawls to a corner and curls up.

In the darkness, when she is certain that no one can see and no can hear, she cries herself to sleep.

\---

Morning comes.

She doesn’t wake. She opens her eyes but that is all. Her soul lies dormant. There are sounds. There are colours, yes, even in a place so bare and rotten, the rats would crown this their kingdom if they found holes in it. Maybe they did. She wouldn’t notice if they had. Grey. Different grey. She doesn’t give a fuck and wonders whether she would see something else if she looked. That is her only thought for the day.

Everything else is noise. Drowning. Choking. Punching the floor.

And then, silence.

But a part of her is gone.

Forever.

 

**ii.**

“FUCK YOU!”

They are dragging her away. She struggles against the chains, determined to fight until the fight leaves her body. The last weeks have weakened her. She is scrawny, filthy, covered in rags, but there is one thing they will never take, one piece of her they will never break. Her spirit. She doesn’t care if they shatter her bones because pain is fleeting, it goes away even when the scars remain. But if they fail to subdue her, that will be her triumph.

Of course – and a part of her knows this – they _have_ subdued her because she is caged and it doesn’t matter whether she rages against it, not really. She allows herself the delusion because she doesn’t want to go insane. Sometimes it’s that simple.

“This one’s a savage bitch.”

They chuckle.

She spits at them.

It takes a while before she realizes that they aren’t leading her to her execution. She should have had a last meal if there is any decency left. So it must be something else. She doesn’t dare to imagine what it might be. Hope is treacherous. It can suffocate any flame of resistance as easily as stoke it.

The guards haul her through long corridors that become fancier the farther they come along. At some point Anne ceases to push against her constraints and decides to bide her time, to wait and strike in the right moment like she used to do. They will never see it coming.

When they finally arrive at their destination, she has conceived a plan. Wipe the left, brutish looking soldier from his feet, claw at the face of the right one and kick him in the nuts, jump on the other one and strangle him with her chains. She won’t be able to escape but what are they going to do, hang her? She will teach them fear one last time. She just has to wait… a little longer…

“Keep your fucking mouth shut while you’re in there,” the soldier on the right, a young man, almost a kid, snarls at her. Then they take her into an office full of expensive carpets and drapes and bookshelves. Governor Lawes is seated behind the desk, busying himself by drafting some form of letter. He only looks up once when she enters and casts a brief glance over her before dipping his quill into an ink jar and resuming his writing. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticks away the remaining minutes of Anne’s life.

The guards force her to her knees. Now would be the moment. But all of a sudden, she feels paralyzed. Could it be…?

“The jury has found that you are indeed with child,” the Governor states dryly and quite obviously personally unconvinced. He sighs and keeps his eyes fixed on the parchment. “It is thus that I grant you a reprieval until such a time as the delivery. I want to stress that this does, by no means, absolve you of your crimes and sins but the law is the law and we must obey it.”

She stares at him, as shocked as she is relieved. Anything she might say or do, foolishly or otherwise, is swallowed by the crushing realization that Jack has, once again, saved her, even from beyond the grave; and she needs it to be true, she needs this to be his last proud achievement when so much that he set his mind on went wrong. He must have known. In his last seconds, this must have been his thought. She will not allow for anything else.

Governor Lawes keeps writing. The clock keeps ticking. The quill scratches. No one moves. Anne can barely hide her disdain. No rushed actions now. But how utterly absurd. The man sits there with all the calm in the world in his cushioned chair, wearing a satin blouse with frills and a powdered wig, and a bead of sweat escapes alongside his temple and he presides over all of Jamaica.

Could they not have told her down in the dungeon? No, she had to be brought to him to hear it from his own lips.

By the grace of God.

Who created heaven and earth and injustice.

\---

They give her a new cell. It has a bed. Lice, too, but Anne learned to count the small blessings early in life.

Weeks pass. No child grows inside her. She begins to wonder when they will notice. The guards barely look at her. They shove a plate of food through the hatch in the door and they empty the bucket but they never make eye contact. Even the sun shuns her. The window is too small.

So she lies down. Sometimes she gets up.

Then she stands on her tiptoes and tries to reach for the bars of her window because she thinks that if she grabs them, she can pull herself up to look outside. They are too high. She never reaches them. But she tries.

Until one day where she lies in the bed and keeps lying. It has been two months. She doesn’t know that. She has lost any feeling for time. Her hour glass has burst and the sand has spilled onto the floor of her mind. She closes her eyes and dives into it.

There is a beach. The sand is warm, soothing, not at all hot and burning like it was when she was still– so long ago–

And there is the most beautiful smile Anne has ever seen.

Someone knocks on the door. It happens to be the day where she hears a voice again.

“You have a visitor.”

 

**iii.**

Anne jumps to her feet as if her strength had never left her. There are two voices now outside, one angry and one–

Her breath hitches. She can hear the guard grumbling and then the door opens with a rusty creak.

Is it her? It is. Max. How–?

“Mon chérie,” the other woman whispers and takes a step forward.

Anne can’t speak. But she moves. She rushes to her and they fall into each other’s arms and sink to the ground in their tight embrace, weighing them both down. They don’t smile. Jack is dead. Others are dead. They just cling to each other and hold each other and bask in the revelation that they are still here and close, together. Anne buries her head in Max’ shoulder and takes a deep breath, takes in her scent, rum and some flowery shit that Anne never gave a fuck about except it is everything to her now. She kisses her collarbone, chapped lips on soft skin, and tastes something that turns the ash in her mouth into sweet, sweet honey or some such, poetry was never Anne’s forte and her thoughts are garbled.

How–?

She asks as much, a husky, barely intelligible sound. Max leans back and touches her cheek with the lightest caress and looks at her, truly. Then her gaze flits over the room, if it can be called that. Carefully, she rises and draws Anne with her until they both stand. Anne has to lean on her, now that the power of their reunion has seeped from her frail limbs. There is worry in Max’ face.

“Let’s get you out of here first.”

It is only then that Anne notices the open door.

\---

She sleeps. She doesn’t want to but she can’t not. For all her weeks of lying around, she never slept like this.

When she finally awakes, they are on the road, being rattled around in a carriage. Anne had never imagined travelling in such a plush setting and it is far more uncomfortable than she would have thought. Slowly, she peels the curtain away from the window. Rain is whipping against the glass. A stormy front of clouds towers in the sky. Everything is grey except there is blue and green and red underneath it all, veiled in the water. And it’s so easy to see. She doesn’t even have to raise her head. How can it be so easy.

She withdraws her hand and looks at Max. Max who has been watching her. Max with her wonderful big kind eyes and her perfectly pinned-up curls and her azure gown with golden embroidery that is half-covered by a cloak. If this were the only view she would ever enjoy again, it would be enough.

Neither of them wants to disturb the silence. Sometimes this is all that is needed. Two women looking at each other. And the drumming of the rain.

But the world turns and so do Anne’s thoughts. She has to know.

“How did you do it?”

Max as good as shrugs.

“I bribed them.”

“The matrons.”

“Yes.”

“So Jack–?”

Max unfolds her hands in her lap and brushes over the silky fabric of her dress with great care, thinking about her answer. Then she ventures:

“He must have known that I would not let you die if presented with an opportunity to save you. Even after what happened with the gold.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the gold.”

“If not for the gold, you would be dead.”

Anne fumbles with the blanket Max must have draped over her while she was asleep. A thread comes loose. She sighs and pushes the blanket away, rubbing her forehead before focusing on Max again. She is right. Of course she is right.

Max waits for a moment until the thought settles. Then she continues.

“Ransoming you, however, was more difficult. I’m sorry it took that long.”

“You bought my freedom?”

Outside, the wind is howling. Anne doesn’t understand why she has trouble believing this. Everything can be bought. She buries her head in her hands. It’s not that. It’s that someone would– how expensive it must have been–

“Eleanor helped.”

Anne’s head snaps back up. Eleanor?

“Why the fuck would she?”

“Because I couldn’t petition for it myself. So she asked Governor Rogers to relay the appeal. And the money.”

Max says it like a matter of fact, like it is something ordinary, like this is something that happens every day. It doesn’t. And it doesn’t answer the question so Anne repeats it and stresses every word:

“Why. the. fuck. would. she?”

At last, Max blinks. Her gaze falters and she turns to observe the droplets washing down the window pane in fragmented streams. Somewhere behind the swaying wall of rain, cottages come into view.

“She thinks she owes me,” she says with a frown. Contemplating. Then she looks at Anne again and there is regret in her face and sadness in her voice. “Guilt never goes away.”

This, they both understand.

Max extends her hands.

Anne takes them into her own.

Their fingers interweave.

She notices the ring. Doesn’t ask. Brings it to her lips. Leans forward. Pins Max’ hands to her sides. Finds her mouth. Kisses her. Gently. Then urgently. Opens her up. Releases the hands; that find their way to the sides of her face, stroking, holding. Touching, between them, where their tongues meet. And that wish to drown in each other.

The carriage comes to a halt. They disentangle. Breath. Lean their foreheads together. Another kiss. Quickly.

And then a smile.

The saddest smiles the world has ever known, maybe. But, undoubtedly, the happiest. Because only those who have lost everything know the value of that which they possess.

\---

Anne recognizes right away where they are. A harbor. Sea, again. She has lost the appetite for it. She prefers the steady ground beneath her feet now.

Max stands beside her, an arm tucked into hers. They brave the rain under a leaking canopy, both already wet, their clothes soaked.

“That is ours.”

Max points towards the ship that will grant them passage to Bristol. Anne nods. One more time then. And after that a quiet life running a tavern. That’s the plan. It’s not something Anne ever dreamed of. But she never dreamed of anything. She latched onto the dreams of others. First Jack, now Max. Sometimes she feels like their shadow. Their guard. But others can look after themselves. And Max wouldn’t have come for her if that was all that she was.

“John’s already on there.”

Her husband. Anne doesn’t care much for Silver but she’s grateful to him. It will make everything easier.

“How is he?” she asks reluctantly, finding that she genuinely wants to know.

“He is changed after what happened with Flint,” is Max’ sole reply and the solemn tone of it tells Anne all she needs to know.

They start towards the ship, still linked together. It’s cold and they shiver.

The warmth between them is all they have left and they move closer and don’t let go.

 

**Fin.**


End file.
